Posts about youtube

The world’s leaders are asking you to tell them what to do. This YouTube video from the World Economic Forum at Davos asks, “What one thing do you think that countries, companies or individuals must do to make the world a better place in 2008?” Starting now, they’re also asking you to vote on the responses you like best (as of now, there are 60 to see). They will be shown at the annual meeting of machers in the Swiss Alps, starting January 23, and the machers are suppose to respond back at a YouTube booth at the conference.

I was lucky enough to go to Davos last year and I’m lucky enough to go again this year. How can you pass down the chance to hobnob with everyone from Bill Gates to Gordon Brown to Chad Hurley to Mark Zuckerberg with more political, business, and media machers mixed in? I was also privileged to work on the Davos Conversation project last year and this video effort is an extension of that. The conversation expands.

When the folks at WEF first talked with me about extending the conversation that occurs at their annual meeting outside the cloistered confines of the charming dorf of Davos, they admitted some nervousness. These echelons aren’t accustomed to conversation. But the WEF folks were smart enough to want to teach the powerful there that the internet age is all about conversation. So it started with steps. The Davos Conversation page (disclosure: built by Daylife) included blog posts from bloggers there as well as Technorati links to others from elsewhere who joined the conversation, plus some videos we took. (Here are Arianna Huffington and me at the end; here‘s my video of YouTube’s Chad Hurley announcing his revenue sharing program.) I wandered around with my little camera shooting video and not even knowing that that itself was breaking a few rules. But the castles didn’t tumble and so the conversation continues and grows.

That’s why Davos is involving YouTube and the world in trying to extend this via video. There’ll be a booth on the main floor of the conference center where the powerful can record a message to the world — “Hey, YouTubers” — or a response to your messages. Blogging continues with some new guests (Michael Arrington of TechCrunch is joining this year and I know they were trying to get a few more unexpected participants). And Reuters is extending its mojo (mobile journalism) project by equipping some of the participants with their kits (I weaseled my way into this one!) to chronicle the meeting in text, photos, audio, and video.

To join this conversation, just use the Davos08 tag wherever you put up blog posts or videos or respond to the Davos invitation here.

Here’s one reply to the Davos question, arguing for technology to spread education:

This reply takes only eight second and makes sense:

This gumchewer says the single thing that would improve the world would be universal internet access: free wi-fi for all:

Here’s a guy who wants to use YouTube to actually spread knowledge:

This Canadian wants product labels revealing the impact of the products we buy on the world:

I love Jimmy Justice, the guy who wanders the streets of New York videotaping traffic cops who are violating the traffic laws they are supposed to enforce and confronting them with their sins. This is the power of the people, armed with their own cameras and the internet, acting as watchdogs on government. Isn’t that journalism?

On the Today Show this morning, David Gregory got on a high horse interviewing Jimmy, asking whether he wasn’t just a bit obnoxious. (I dare you to try to find the story on the show’s site; I can’t.) *

Well, what’s any less obnoxious about a reporter asking the same question? That’s exactly why subjects so often think reporters are rude: they’re being asked questions they don’t want to answer. But here’s Gregory calling a citizen with a camera obnoxious for doing what reporters do. Maybe that’s because Jimmy has an accent and an attitude. Gregory clearly thinks that asking the question in a tie with a sterile TV voice is less obnoxious: more professional. Style is substance on TV. And I can hear someone now saying that Jimmy has an ax to grind, a bias, an agenda. Well, yes, but so does a reporter when he decides to follow that cop and confront her about her actions; that agenda is precisely the motivation for the question. It’s all journalism.

If they really care about watchdogging government and its abuses of power, the proper response from the Today show and any journalistic organization should be to encourage more people to do what Jimmy is doing. What’s wrong with more watchdogs on the street? Indeed, Today should hand out some video cameras or at least share a few lessons with Jimmy about how to shoot video without giving us motion sickness. And it would be generous of them to talk about Jimmy’s rights to shoot public officials’ actions in public, since those officials try to threaten and intimidate Jimmy.

Hey, Mr. Gregory: You and Jimmy are on the same side. You’re doing journalism. It may not sound as slick, but the end result is the same.

* LATER: Thanks to Dan in the comments for finding the Today segment. David Gregory’s fuller quote: “It’s a little obnoxious. Do you not worry about coming off as an obnoxious, aggressive guy here?”

Do reporters? Should they?

Jimmy says he was frustrated getting anyone to pay attention to his complaints about the traffic officers: “I had to bring it to YouTube. I had to show it to the people.”

My Guardian column this week is about the YouTube debates, bringing together some of what I’ve talked about here. (Nonregistration version here.) Snippet:

The two media did not mix well. CNN displayed the YouTube videos in small squares on a big screen shot by a big camera – reduced, finally, to postage stamps on our screens. It seemed the network was ashamed to show the videos full-screen because they would not look like real TV. But, of course, that’s just the point. They weren’t real TV. They were bits of conversation.

TV doesn’t know how to have a conversation. TV knows how to perform. The event’s moderator, CNN’s Anderson Cooper, behaved almost apologetically about the intrusion of these real people, who speak without benefit of make-up. He interrupted the candidates constantly, allowing them shallow soundbites a fraction the length and depth of even a YouTube video.

So I wish we’d have the YouTube debate on YouTube and leave TV behind. A few of the candidates are beginning to answer voters’ questions and challenges directly, small-camera-to-small-camera. Thus they are opening up a dialogue between candidate and constituent that was not possible before the internet: a conversation in our new public square. That is how elections should be held, amid the citizens.

The Republicans are, I believe, making a gigantic mistake in running away, scared, from the internet. They’re running away from voters — and their money.

The latest indication of their fear of the internet is their attempt to fink out on the YouTube/CNN Republican debate. The party line — as we see from Rush and others — is that YouTube is somehow biased. That’s absurd. That would be like the Democrats saying that mail is biased because the Republicans made the first, best use of it. If internet video is biased it is a damned bad sign for the right and mighty strange considering the leading work done in the medium by the conservatives in the UK, France, and Germany. Hugh Hewitt frets that listening to YouTube will open up Republicans to cheap shots. That’s merely convenient paranoia. They’re looking for excuses to stay away from this dance.

The Republicans are scared of the internet. They are scared of us.

Giuliani has, as this blog as pointed out frequently, run away from the internet and interacting with voters there at every opportunity: It shows in his pathetic internet fundraising. Patrick Ruffini, former Giuliani internet guy (we can see why that’s former) frets that the Republicans will be outraised by $100 million because of this attitude. Meanwhile, Mitt Romney is sniffing snottily at the quality of the questions on YouTube… from citizens. John McCain has been stiff and scared in his videos. Sam Brownback has hardly made any videos and the ones he has made are as stiff as a Kansas silo. The entire party has left the internet to Ron Paul. And he has taken it and run.

In the end, this is not only short-sighted tactically but also essentially insulting to the American people. We are on the internt. Come talk with us. What, you’re too scared to? Big, tough terrorists don’t scare you but we do? Come on, boys, we don’t bite. But we do vote.

I’m writing my Guardian column this week about the YouTube debate (no surprise) and as I thought about it more, I decided that it was a clash of media. Here’s my take and then I’ll show you the quite contrary take of a BBC editor. But it’s my blog, so me first:

*

. . . But TV got in the way. The candidates responded to most of this with their over-rehearsed, well-spun, often-used cant: empty words about change and experience – and if anyone mentions a soldier in the family, the candidate is obligated to deliver the thanks of the nation. This is how politicians behave before the big cameras. But the folks on the YouTube videos were speaking to little cameras; they were more direct, intimate, authentic.

The two media did not mix well. CNN displayed the YouTube videos in small squares on a big screen shot by a big camera – reduced, finally, to postage stamps on our screens at home, so we could barely see them. It seemed the network was afraid to show the videos full-screen because they would not look like real TV. But, of course, that’s just the point. They weren’t real TV. They were bits of conversation.

But TV doesn’t know how to have a conversation. TV knows how to perform. The moderator of the event, prematurely white-haired Anderson Cooper, acted almost apologetic about the intrusion of these real people, who speak without benefit of make-up. He interrupted the candidates constantly, allowing them shallow soundbites a fraction the length and depth even of a YouTube video.

So I wish we’d have the YouTube debate on YouTube and leave CNN at home. A few of the candidates are beginning to answer voters’ questions and challenges directly, small-camera-to-small-camera (as Nikolas SP Sarkozy did in his campaign and as David Cameraon does on his web site). Thus they are opening up a dialogue between the public and the powerful that was not possible before the internet: a conversation in our new public square. That is how elections should be held, amid the citizens. . . .

*

And then I read the BBC editors’ blog with the opposite take from Kevin Marsh, a big-TV veteran and head of the net’s “college of journalism.” He writes of the debate:

It was a terrific clash – but not the intended clash of aspirant presidents tussling to give frank answers to the people’s questions in the people’s circus. It was, instead, a clash between two media cultures; old-style ‘big journalism’ and new-style ‘citizen media’. On this showing, ‘big journalism’ is safe. . . .

This time round, social networking has moved on and YouTube has entered the stage, along with zealots advocating the role of ‘citizen media’ in helping America choose the occupant of the most powerful office on earth.

Uber-zealot Jeff Jarvis – who blogs here at Buzz Machine – was one of those behind a website called ‘Prezvid’ – its aim, to bring video sharing into the democratic process. Fine – except that behind it is the unwritten value system that ascribes the highest worth to so-called ‘Macaca Moments’ – named after Virginia Senator George Allen’s apparently racist comment in an unguarded moment. The relationship between media and democracy has got to be more than catching out the unguarded or unprincipled.

Mr. Marsh says that “it” — PrezVid — has an unwritten value system ascribing high worth to Macaca moments. Mr. Marsh, show me where that is my value system, written or unwritten. I have never said any such thing. In fact, I have fretted that we would have too many such moments yielding an resulting in an unforgiving electorate but — characteristically, for me, if I may be the judge of that — I came down on the side of optimism, believing that we, the people, are smart enough to discern the difference between a mere mistake or blooper and a character flaw. That is what I actually have said. Mr. Marsh chooses to project his view of what he wants to think I said on me. Either that, or he has a real problem with his antecedents. In either case, a rather surprising lapse from a “big journalism,” I’d say. He continues:

Citizen media’s advocates, like Jeff Jarvis, had high hopes:

“The YouTube debates could fundamentally change the dynamics of politics in America, giving a voice to the people, letting us be heard by the powerful and the public, enabling us to coalesce around our interests and needs, and even teaching reporters who are supposed to ask questions in our stead how they should really do it.”

Too high. In the event, nothing new was revealed and a snowman was the star. No candidate was especially tested – indeed, they all seemed to find their key task (don’t get out, don’t give hostages to fortune) substantially easier than with a format such as ‘Meet the Press’ … or even the traditional anchor interview. As far as I could tell, the dynamics remained unchanged.

Contrast Jeff Jarvis’s disappointment after the event with his hopes before it – he and others blamed the format, blamed the anchor … even blamed the system for producing too many candidates.

He misses the point. ‘Big media’s’ monopoly of communication in the democratic process is over. Good. But hopes for ‘citizen media’ need to be realistic; as does any assessment of the enduring merits of ‘big media’ … like its ability to pose and press the really tough questions; like its persistence in coming back to the unanswered questions; like its ability to field ego against ego, personality against personality … not the most attractive aspect of ‘big media’, but its most necessary given the politics that we have.

Maybe there is a way of fusing ‘big’ and ‘citizen’, ‘old’ and ‘new’, but this wasn’t it.

Well, we agree about the fusing but disagree, clearly, about the cause. The citizens spoke with eloquence and directness, when they were permitted to by the big media. It was the big media that messed that up.

*

Here is my friend Michael Rosenblum, former big-media guy now small-media guy, taking my side on the question of CNN selecting all the questions:

A few days ago, CNN started running a promo in which CNN News VP David Bohrman and a few producers sat at a table in front of laptops. “We’ve gotten hundreds of questions so far” says Bohrman, “and we have to pick the best ones to ask”.

Why?

Why does David Bohrman (or anyone for that matter) have to pick the best questions, or any questions. Why not just post all the video questions on the web and let the public decide which ones they like the best.

In the online world, David Bohrman, (or anyone else doing this) simply gets in the way of the process. The beauty of the web is that it does not need, nor does it want ‘executive producers’ or ‘vice presidents’. Neither would I want David Bohrman to be on Amazon.com deciding which of the thousands of books available we will be offering tonight.

Go home.

The same goes for Anderson Cooper.

Get out of the way.

Hell, even Adam Cohen on the New York Times editorial page — big media of big media — understands how it would have been better for the people to have had a role in the selection:

Whatever the ideology, these questions had an authentic feel that is too often lacking in the scripted words of paid professionals. The questions could become even more real in future debates, if the organizers drop the filtering and let YouTube users pick the questions.